It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

------------ Kenneth Grahame

Monday, April 20, 2015

Blackthorn

Blackthorn in flower: endrino, prunellier;Schlehdorn say the Germans (the Schleh being sloe),meaning, to the Proto-Indoeuropean,bluish, blue-black; skin-coloredfor some Africans. Sloe gin being actually,if you care about such things, a liqueur;add enough sugar and anything is sweet.

And never mind whether black meansthe mat black of the bark --for canes of authority and beating boysinto whipmasters on their own account --or the dark, bloom-whispered midnightof secret fruit among a brawl of thorn, blossom, sucker and snow. Who can choose or know?We must go further back, falling backward,jolted by the concrete stair of time,to the first slender wand, the first white star,whiskered as a kitten and dotted as the scriptof Arabian princes, in the first spring, before any fruithad stained the yard.